


The Long Home

by Trapelo_Road475



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M, Montreal Canadiens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-20
Updated: 2014-01-20
Packaged: 2018-01-09 11:28:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1145430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trapelo_Road475/pseuds/Trapelo_Road475
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been a long, long time, but Butch is finally going home, and everyone - and Maurice - is waiting for him.</p><p>Implied character death.</p><p>Inspired, to a degree, by the Maurice Richard biopic 'The Rocket'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Long Home

It was quieter, then.

Quieter than he'd expected.

As if he'd expected anything.

No bright light. Just a dimming. And quiet. A long time quiet. 

But shush, shush, the sound in darkness. Shush, shush, and clatter, and he knew those sounds, he knew them to his bones, and when he found his footing in the black, he followed. To the booming clap of a puck on the boards, the high chime, hit the post, and from the quiet he is gladdening, and from the darkness he sees the faint lights, the smoke-haze. No bright light no hallelujah no choir of angels. No angels at all, but bodies framed in halo-glare. 

He is coming up the tunnel. He is on his feet. There is a stick in his hand. His old pads, an armor, an embrace. He doesn't need to look down to his chest to know. He knows already. The smell of smoke and popcorn and wet wool. Puck-stained skate-chipped wood and painted metal. He knows already, past the veil of silence and dark, at the edges of the ice.

There they are. There they are, all the brothers he once knew and loved and lost. There they are and oh, they could be wearing any colors at all, and he'd still know them. How they skate. How they shoot. The fire in their eyes. 

He itches to be on the ice with them. Is this heaven? Is the whisper of blades and the crack of sticks and the playful roars and taunts of his old friends the voice of God? 

"There you are."

Toe. The words pull his eyes, and there he is: smiling. The C on his chest. Hair dripping. 

"Missed you a while there, Butch."

He doesn't know if he can speak here, but his mouth moves, his tongue lifts. "I had some things to do." He doesn't know where the words come from, but there they are.

"Don't we all?" Toe's eyes are bright.

Butch feels himself smiling back. Looking up to the stands, the overhead glare, he can see everything: back, all the champions of the past, and he among them, and he can see the present tension and the slipping of his beloved team, and as he scans the seats, he feels his heart rise to see the future. Of course. 

"We knew you'd be here," Toe says. "Maurice has been an awful pain about it."

Of course. Toe would know. If he didn't know back then and there (and Butch figures he probably did) then he would know now, as they stand here, whatever here is. He would know. The fire in those eyes. He had been blessed to share the flame in his heart. 

À vous de porter l'oriflamme  
Et de garder au fond de l'âme...

Yes. Of course. 

He laughs. Because Maurice would be. Before he asks - 

"Where do you think he'd be?"

Butch laughs and hits the ice, and yes, of course, there he is - pucks lined up (and, he notes, surprised, pleased at this new world - the pucks renew their line infinitely) and pounding shot after shot into the empty net. 

He doesn't say a word and he doesn't need to. He just pushes his gloved fist against Maurice's elbow and gets those blazing eyes. There are no words. Nothing from the ether or himself. Did he ever truly believe he would see those eyes again? The scars and crooked smile? He is now just as he was in their living world, in their glory, just as Butch remembers drenched in sweat and champagne, teeth bared in joy. 

Maurice. 

There was another kind of love between them then. All of them, who wore the bleu, blanc, rouge, who beat their bodies black and blue and into ice for les Glorieux, for honor, for the prize. There was another kind of love like brothers, as if somewhere God had whispered direction to an infant ear: you will find your brothers here. The ones not bound by blood. 

And he had loved Maurice. Translator, roommate, occasional sparring partner. The fire kindled. They had loved each other. A touch was electric; a kiss a spark.

Quickly Maurice cross-checks him hard across the gut, all but knocks the wind out of him, then drops the gloves and grabs him by the hair and pulls their foreheads close.

And he sees it, with this strange new sight in this strange new heaven, he sees what was from someone else's eyes, every answer to every question he had wondered when Maurice had left the mortal earth. 

Every answer yes. 

The ice is empty. The ice is not the ice. They are in the dressing room. They are in a hotel room. From every high window they could see the world. They are in their sweated pads. They are in their suits. They are in their undershirts with suspenders dangling. 

Every answer yes. 

One of them kisses the other, or the other way around. Frantic. Kinetic. Flash of silver. 

"I missed you," he says, between a half-breath and another kiss. 

"I missed you," he replies, his fingers brushing black hair, the bristle of it at his nape, the thicker strands that fall in his face, see it there, Maurice above him, all teeth, even his laugh is a tiger's.

The first time, Butch half-expected to see stripes on his skin in the golden light. 

"Did you?"

"No," he says. "But they were always there."

Yes. Every answer always yes. You are here and with me I am here and with you. 

In this place where a man is forever as young as his heart, where the ice is always fast and his brothers always where he remembers them.

In this place. Less the frantic blaze. He touches the high cheekbone. He was always bigger. He still is. Some things don't change. Did he ever truly believe he would be here again? 

He brings Maurice to him in his arms. 

When he closes his eyes, what was and is and will yet be, on the level earth and in this eternal, changeable place, all comes to him in whispers and filmstrip, and then in kodachrome glory, touched with fire at the edges. 

"Did you wait a long time?"

"There isn't any time here." 

"Good."

Quieter, then. 

The rattle of an overnight train. The whistle. 

Quieter then.


End file.
